1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet recording apparatus for recording images by an ink-jet method, and to an ink-jet recording method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image recording method for recording color images, various methods have been proposed in recent years, and in all of the methods, demands with respect to qualities of recorded products such as image quality, texture and curl after recording are high.
For instance, as an ink-jet recording method, a method using an ink-jet recording medium that has an ink receiving recording layer with a porous structure has been put to practical use. As one example thereof, there is an ink-jet recording medium in which a recording layer that contains inorganic pigment particles and a water-soluble binder and has a high porosity is provided on a support. Owing to the porous structure, the medium has excellent quick-drying performance and high luster and is capable of recording photograph-like images.
Ink-jet technology has been employed in fields such as office printers and home printers, and, in recent years, has been extending into the field of commercial printing. For instance, there have been demands for applications such as printing images at high speed (high-speed printing) or printing a large number of copies at a time (high-volume printing), or for recording images on both sides (double-sided recording) in commercial prints such as photo books. In these applications, when images are recorded by jetting inks, not only is the recording of high quality and highly lustrous images at high speed demanded, but also stable density and hue of the recorded images are demanded, from the viewpoint of quality as a recording material.
Under such circumstances in which improvement in quality and performance is proceeding, the influence of ambient humidity or drying conditions on image quality after recording cannot be ignored when double-sided recording, high-volume printing, high-speed printing or the like is performed.
As a technology related to the above, a technology is disclosed (for instance, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 9-202042), in which a cationic resin is adhered onto a plain paper sheet that has a support serving as an ink receiving layer, and recording is performed using a high-speed rotary ink-jet printing system having, as an auxiliary drying device, an induction heating device such as a high-frequency heating device or a microwave heating device. Further, there is also disclosure regarding carrying out heat treatment after an image is recorded (for instance, see JP-A Nos. 2004-188704, 2005-297535, and 2006-111016).